If you liked the first season of "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency," you'll probably like the second. However, if you didn't make it to the end of the first season, the second is not a good place to start. Nearly every member of the big, messy cast returns for a new adventure, joined by a couple of newcomers. And just like the first season, it takes a while to sort out what exactly is going on.
We could start with the fairy tale land of Wendimoor, where a civil war is going on between the families of Panto Trost (Christopher Russell) and Silas Dengdamor (Lee Majdoub), star-crossed lovers trying to fulfill a prophecy to defeat the evil Mage (John Hannah) destroying their lands. Or we could start with Project Blackwing, now lead by the dimwitted Sgt. Friedkin, which is holding Dirk Gently, the Rowdy Three, and Bart's friend Ken captive. Speaking of Bart, she finds her way to the little town of Bergsberg Montana, where a housewife named Suzie Boreton (Amanda Walsh) starts some trouble with a newly acquired magic wand. Todd and Farah, who also end up in Bergsberg looking for Dirk, team up with Sheriff Hobbs (Tyler Labine) and Deputy Tina Tevetino (Izzie Steele) to investigate. Oh, and we can't forget Amanda is still involved, as is a fifty year-old double murder case, a missing boy, a holistic actress, and an evil bounty hunter played by Alan Tudyk.
This year's mystery is much more straightforward and comprehensible than the first, and has more breathing room with an extra two episodes. Instead of time travel and brain-swapping, we have portals to different worlds and magic working in real life for reasons that the heroes have to uncover. To that end, the show is much less science-fiction and much more fantasy/supernatural this time out, especially everything surrounding Wendimoor, which is deliberately made to look like a child's fantasy land. The show is still very adult oriented, with a lot of people getting killed off in creative ways, but there's no denying that everything feels much sillier when you've got pink-haired people going around brandishing giant scissors, and people getting blasted with magic wands.
Though there are a lot of good individual pieces, this year felt a lot less successful in execution. I liked the first season primarily because of the mystery, which took a lot of wacky, random events and slowly revealed how they all fit together. The characters were a very mixed bag, and the writing was frequently overloaded with exposition, but I thought it worked pretty well overall. This year, the characters are mostly stronger, and I especially like some of the newcomers, but the mystery aspect was seriously downplayed, and less smartly put together. It feels like "Dirk Gently" is transitioning to something more character-centric and mythology-based, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
The trouble is that the character work still has some significant bumps. Dirk spends much of the season in a gloomy, existential funk, which means that he's no fun at all until he snaps out of it. Bart is also questioning her place in the universe, which means she spends most of her time not killing people and not being dangerous. Maybe that's leading somewhere, but not that I can tell yet. The lead actresses both see significant improvements though. Amanda gets empowered and given a mission, which is great to see, while Farah benefits from being teamed up with the delightfully rough-edged Tina. A similarly good Odd Couple team-up occurs between idiotic Sgt. Friedkin and an incredulous Ken.
However, my favorite character is Suzie Boreton, initially presented as a sad victim of suburbia. Her arc nicely subverts our expectations, slowly revealing that Suzie is a far more complicated and formidable creature than she appears to be at first glance. Amanda Walsh is fantastic at giving her these twitchy, over-the-top reactions, and gradually morphing her from pitiful to something quite different. She also boasts the best costuming in a year of some very iffy production choices. I mean, the idea for Wendimoor and all its fantasy characters is fine, but a TV budget only goes so far.
To sum up, this year of "Dirk Gently" should be a decent watch if you already liked the first one. I suspect the changes in style and storytelling are really going to throw some people though, and it'll end up working much better for some viewers than others.
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Saturday, June 30, 2018
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Goodbye to the Rotten Tomatoes Forum
I spent a couple of weeks toying with the idea of writing up a post on the changes that happened over at the AV Club last year, where the website was redesigned to become part of the Gawker network, and the comments were migrated over to a new platform called Kinja, throwing the site's community into predictable chaos. Cue another mass exodus of disgruntled media fans who felt they had been evicted from their turf. They went off and founded a new site called The Avocado (https://the-avocado.org) to continue their discussion activities in peace. And they brought the Disquis commenting platform with them, which I find kinda hilarious.
But then I went and checked in on the Rotten Tomatoes discussion forums, another review site adjacent media fan community, and discovered that their forums had been deleted by Rotten Tomatoes at some point in November, 2017. And my heart promptly sank through the floor. While I read the AV Club discussions occasionally and enjoyed them, I never really participated. Rotten Tomatoes, or RT, was different. These were the forums I had visited daily for several years between 2003 and 2010, where I knew many of the regular posters by name, and where I participated frequently. This was my online home during the years I really became a film geek.
I didn't post nearly as much as some, but I did count myself as an active member of the RT community. I was one of the forum's resident animation obsessives, and wrote up several lengthy, multi-post lists of favorite movies and shows. Others used similar formats for retrospectives, marathons, and analysis pieces on a myriad of different geeky media subjects. It was a tradition that when you hit a new post count milestone (10 thousand, 20 thousand), you wrote up a new feature. And then there were the debates, the tournaments, the polls and the contests, the most famous of which was a weekly Photoshop challenge. The long-running in-joke involving Vin Diesel in a ridiculous action pose from "The Chronicles of Riddick" is the only reason I still remember that movie fondly. The tone on RT was informal and people frequently went off topic, even though there was a dedicated "Off Topic" forum. TV, sports, and wrestling threads were common. Sure, there were trolls and creeps, but also some of the most knowledgeable and creative and bored film nerds on the internet, who just wanted to hang out and talk and write about movies.
And it's all gone. Totally, irretrievably gone. Hundreds of thousands of posts, and all that geeky fan content have been lost to the electronic ether. I spent some time with Google and the Wayback Machine sneaking peeks at the old forums, from before the 2014 redesign that drove some members away for good. But long before that, the RT forums had been neglected for several years by the Rotten Tomatoes leadership, and were often buggy and temperamental. They weren't even linked to from the front page after the 2010 Flixter acquisition, when a few experiments in social networking features meant rearranging a lot of the original site's architecture. The forum's heyday was really in the early 2000s, when fandom discussion migrated out of Usenet and into message boards and forums.
I miss being part of that community. We were mostly anonymous, but the core group of users were prolific and friendly enough that you could get to know people on the forum. The number of active posters was only a few dozen, the moderators were very involved, and it was the era before the bots and 4Chan kids really started gumming up the works. There was a lot of passion, but little ego. Ongoing conversation threads could stretch out over months and years. Everyone just seemed happy to have a listening ear. You weren't always going to get a lot of responses on posts about an unpopular show or movie, but you certainly wouldn't get a hard time about it either. I didn't even mind most of the trolls so much, since the ones that stuck around usually just wanted to talk about cartoons or "Star Wars."
Of course it couldn't last. My own activity on the forums started to peter out after 2010, when I started spending less time online. I could tell that the community was also growing restless. Social media was started to siphon away some users, and the remaining ones felt increasingly insular. The site's technological bugs kept getting worse and most of the main review site's users didn't even know the forums existed anymore. I found other corners of fandom to spend time in, and tried my hand at blogging independently. I kept an eye out for other movie forums I might replace RT with, but never found anything remotely close. And every time I went back to RT, the users were fewer and fewer, the conversations slower, and the updates more infrequent.
There's no going back. Some of the RT posters seem to have gone to The Corrierino to regroup. The IMDB boards are being recreated on MovieChat. Letterboxd has emerged as the social network of choice for movie fans, and there are plenty of dedicated spaces on Reddit and Tumblr and all the rest for whatever movie or show you could name. But for a community as weird and wonderful as the one I knew on Rotten Tomatoes? Still not a lot of good options.
Bye RT. You'll be missed.
But then I went and checked in on the Rotten Tomatoes discussion forums, another review site adjacent media fan community, and discovered that their forums had been deleted by Rotten Tomatoes at some point in November, 2017. And my heart promptly sank through the floor. While I read the AV Club discussions occasionally and enjoyed them, I never really participated. Rotten Tomatoes, or RT, was different. These were the forums I had visited daily for several years between 2003 and 2010, where I knew many of the regular posters by name, and where I participated frequently. This was my online home during the years I really became a film geek.
I didn't post nearly as much as some, but I did count myself as an active member of the RT community. I was one of the forum's resident animation obsessives, and wrote up several lengthy, multi-post lists of favorite movies and shows. Others used similar formats for retrospectives, marathons, and analysis pieces on a myriad of different geeky media subjects. It was a tradition that when you hit a new post count milestone (10 thousand, 20 thousand), you wrote up a new feature. And then there were the debates, the tournaments, the polls and the contests, the most famous of which was a weekly Photoshop challenge. The long-running in-joke involving Vin Diesel in a ridiculous action pose from "The Chronicles of Riddick" is the only reason I still remember that movie fondly. The tone on RT was informal and people frequently went off topic, even though there was a dedicated "Off Topic" forum. TV, sports, and wrestling threads were common. Sure, there were trolls and creeps, but also some of the most knowledgeable and creative and bored film nerds on the internet, who just wanted to hang out and talk and write about movies.
And it's all gone. Totally, irretrievably gone. Hundreds of thousands of posts, and all that geeky fan content have been lost to the electronic ether. I spent some time with Google and the Wayback Machine sneaking peeks at the old forums, from before the 2014 redesign that drove some members away for good. But long before that, the RT forums had been neglected for several years by the Rotten Tomatoes leadership, and were often buggy and temperamental. They weren't even linked to from the front page after the 2010 Flixter acquisition, when a few experiments in social networking features meant rearranging a lot of the original site's architecture. The forum's heyday was really in the early 2000s, when fandom discussion migrated out of Usenet and into message boards and forums.
I miss being part of that community. We were mostly anonymous, but the core group of users were prolific and friendly enough that you could get to know people on the forum. The number of active posters was only a few dozen, the moderators were very involved, and it was the era before the bots and 4Chan kids really started gumming up the works. There was a lot of passion, but little ego. Ongoing conversation threads could stretch out over months and years. Everyone just seemed happy to have a listening ear. You weren't always going to get a lot of responses on posts about an unpopular show or movie, but you certainly wouldn't get a hard time about it either. I didn't even mind most of the trolls so much, since the ones that stuck around usually just wanted to talk about cartoons or "Star Wars."
Of course it couldn't last. My own activity on the forums started to peter out after 2010, when I started spending less time online. I could tell that the community was also growing restless. Social media was started to siphon away some users, and the remaining ones felt increasingly insular. The site's technological bugs kept getting worse and most of the main review site's users didn't even know the forums existed anymore. I found other corners of fandom to spend time in, and tried my hand at blogging independently. I kept an eye out for other movie forums I might replace RT with, but never found anything remotely close. And every time I went back to RT, the users were fewer and fewer, the conversations slower, and the updates more infrequent.
There's no going back. Some of the RT posters seem to have gone to The Corrierino to regroup. The IMDB boards are being recreated on MovieChat. Letterboxd has emerged as the social network of choice for movie fans, and there are plenty of dedicated spaces on Reddit and Tumblr and all the rest for whatever movie or show you could name. But for a community as weird and wonderful as the one I knew on Rotten Tomatoes? Still not a lot of good options.
Bye RT. You'll be missed.
Love, Vienna
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Monday, June 25, 2018
"Mary and the Witch's Flower" Borrows Some Magic
With Studio Ghibli having mostly ceased making feature films after Hayao Miyazaki's retirement in 2013, it looked like the end of one of the last major sources of traditionally animated features. However, some of the creative talent from Ghibli subsequently went off and formed Studio Ponoc, intent on continuing Ghibli's legacy. Their first film, "Mary and the Witch's Flower," is a children's fantasy film that often feels like a love letter to the work of Miyazaki.
Mary Smith (Hana Sugisaki) is a little girl who has just relocated to a picturesque British village near the woods. She's come ahead of her parents, is staying with an elderly aunt, and school hasn't started yet, so Mary is bored. The only other child around is a boy named Peter (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who rubs Mary the wrong way. One day, she follows a black cat named Tib into the the woods, and discovers a special flower called the fly-by-night. The flower allows Mary to use magic, fly on a broomstick, and visit Endor College, a school for witches.
Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who directed the Ghibli features "Arrietty" and "When Marnie Was There," heads up the team of talented artists who do some stunning work here. The style and quality of the animation are indistinguishable from the later Ghibli films. Red-headed Mary looks like a cross between the heroines of "Ponyo" and "Arrietty." Endor College takes a lot from Laputa, the floating island from "Castle in the Sky." There's also a very obvious Ghibli witch, flying sequences, magical creatures, transformation scenes, ornate environments, and echoes of other Ghibli films everywhere you look. As you might guess from the plot summary, "Mary" often plays like a Ghibli "greatest hits" compilation.
To an extent, the film is very reassuring, as it proves beyond a doubt that it's possible to make a Studio Ghibli film without Studio Ghibli. "Mary" is a little weak in the story department, and leans a little too heavily on familiar elements, but I found it up to par with the Ghibli features aimed at younger children like "Ponyo" and "The Cat Returns." Yes, it's very derivative, and lacks a lot of the quieter, more thoughtful storytelling that characterizes Studio Ghibli's best work, but many of the later Ghibli features also have this problem. For Studio Ponoc's first outing, this is definitely a strong accomplishment that I hope they can build on the success of.
What worries me is if Studio Ponoc decides to only make films like "Mary" going forward, and keeps aping elements from Ghibli films to the same degree. I'm concerned that Yonebayashi's creative fingerprints are totally missing from the film, even though this is his third animated feature. One of the big problems that Ghibli had was its almost total domination by the Miyazaki films, to the point where audiences often treated them as one and the same. Younger talent had trouble establishing their own creative voices there. It would be a terrible shame if Studio Ponoc inherited the same problem.
However, it's worth reiterating that "Mary and the Witch's Flower" is only their first film, and it's enormously impressive that it's such a beautifully executed one. So much care and creativity are evident in every frame, and it's a treat to see traditional animation still being done at this level of quality. More character-driven scenes like Mary following the cats through the woods and her antics with the rambunctious broom were my favorites. The broom, who Mary refers to as "Little Broomstick," turns out to be the most memorable personality in the film, thanks to some charming animation.
I find it curious that "Mary" didn't get much attention during awards season, failing to secure an Oscar nomination in a very weak year for animated films. The Stateside release by GKIDS came and went without much fuss. I wonder if it's because Studio Ponoc is a new entity and didn't have the clout of Studio Ghibli, or if the film's obvious derivativeness worked against it. But as far as I'm concerned, they've proved themselves worth keeping an eye on. I hope Studio Ponoc is around for a long time and can eventually make films that no longer have to trade on their predecessor's reputation.
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Mary Smith (Hana Sugisaki) is a little girl who has just relocated to a picturesque British village near the woods. She's come ahead of her parents, is staying with an elderly aunt, and school hasn't started yet, so Mary is bored. The only other child around is a boy named Peter (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who rubs Mary the wrong way. One day, she follows a black cat named Tib into the the woods, and discovers a special flower called the fly-by-night. The flower allows Mary to use magic, fly on a broomstick, and visit Endor College, a school for witches.
Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who directed the Ghibli features "Arrietty" and "When Marnie Was There," heads up the team of talented artists who do some stunning work here. The style and quality of the animation are indistinguishable from the later Ghibli films. Red-headed Mary looks like a cross between the heroines of "Ponyo" and "Arrietty." Endor College takes a lot from Laputa, the floating island from "Castle in the Sky." There's also a very obvious Ghibli witch, flying sequences, magical creatures, transformation scenes, ornate environments, and echoes of other Ghibli films everywhere you look. As you might guess from the plot summary, "Mary" often plays like a Ghibli "greatest hits" compilation.
To an extent, the film is very reassuring, as it proves beyond a doubt that it's possible to make a Studio Ghibli film without Studio Ghibli. "Mary" is a little weak in the story department, and leans a little too heavily on familiar elements, but I found it up to par with the Ghibli features aimed at younger children like "Ponyo" and "The Cat Returns." Yes, it's very derivative, and lacks a lot of the quieter, more thoughtful storytelling that characterizes Studio Ghibli's best work, but many of the later Ghibli features also have this problem. For Studio Ponoc's first outing, this is definitely a strong accomplishment that I hope they can build on the success of.
What worries me is if Studio Ponoc decides to only make films like "Mary" going forward, and keeps aping elements from Ghibli films to the same degree. I'm concerned that Yonebayashi's creative fingerprints are totally missing from the film, even though this is his third animated feature. One of the big problems that Ghibli had was its almost total domination by the Miyazaki films, to the point where audiences often treated them as one and the same. Younger talent had trouble establishing their own creative voices there. It would be a terrible shame if Studio Ponoc inherited the same problem.
However, it's worth reiterating that "Mary and the Witch's Flower" is only their first film, and it's enormously impressive that it's such a beautifully executed one. So much care and creativity are evident in every frame, and it's a treat to see traditional animation still being done at this level of quality. More character-driven scenes like Mary following the cats through the woods and her antics with the rambunctious broom were my favorites. The broom, who Mary refers to as "Little Broomstick," turns out to be the most memorable personality in the film, thanks to some charming animation.
I find it curious that "Mary" didn't get much attention during awards season, failing to secure an Oscar nomination in a very weak year for animated films. The Stateside release by GKIDS came and went without much fuss. I wonder if it's because Studio Ponoc is a new entity and didn't have the clout of Studio Ghibli, or if the film's obvious derivativeness worked against it. But as far as I'm concerned, they've proved themselves worth keeping an eye on. I hope Studio Ponoc is around for a long time and can eventually make films that no longer have to trade on their predecessor's reputation.
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Friday, June 22, 2018
"Carnal Knowledge" Still Provokes
"Carnal Knowledge" is one of those films that has gained a reputation over the years. It's infamous for being at the center of a major obscenity case that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately deemed its contents not obscene. Offering multiple instances of nudity, simulated sex, several four-letter words, and plenty of very frank discussion of sex and sexuality, "Carnal Knowledge" was simply too much for many audiences in 1971 to handle.
Nearly half a century later, social mores are very different, and there's no longer much about the movie that's very shocking. There's still content that's a little distasteful, and plenty that still touches a nerve. As the title and the controversy suggest, "Carnal Knowledge" is all about sex, specifically the attitudes of a pair of men, Sandy (Art Garfunkle) and Jonathan (Jack Nicholson), toward sex and the various women in their lives over a period of fifteen years. The first part of the film deals with their relationships with Susan (Candice Bergen), who dates Sandy and cheats with Jonathan. The second part follows Jonathan's relationship with a woman named Bobbie (Ann-Margret) several years later.
We first hear our leads talking over the title credits as a pair of young college students, eagerly discussing what they're looking for in the opposite sex. Jonathan's interest is strictly physical while Sandy has more high-minded ideas. Their language is often crude, demeaning, and misogynistic, especially on Jonathan's part. He calls his exes "ballbusters," and the older he gets, the more he has, and the more bitter he becomes toward women in general. The movie understands that Jonathan is a lout, and his awful attitudes are what cause him so much misery in his relationships. However, it's still rare to see any kind of media address this head on, and portray a man like Jonathan so candidly.
The performances are a big part of why the movie is so effective. Jack Nicholson does some of his best work as Jonathan, somehow remaining sympathetic even after betraying Sandy, and treating every woman he meets terribly. He shouts and menaces, but his insecurity is apparent in every frame, and in the end his worst victim is himself. Art Garfunkel's nebbishy Sandy stands in for the average schlub, whose romantic idealism seems to point toward happiness, but then finds himself beaten down by domesticity and monogamy. There's a priceless monologue where he clinically relays the state of his moribund marital sex life that is simultaneously hilarious and tragic.
And what of the women of "Carnal Knowledge"? More prurient viewers will cherish being able to see Candice Bergen and Ann-Marget in various states of undress. However, as the POV stays with the men, we only learn a little about their partners. Ann-Marget's Bobbie comes off as the most well-rounded, a sweet woman who initially seems to be Jonathan's perfect match, but grows increasingly dissatisfied and listless within the relationship. Bergen does a lot with a very abbreviated part. Carol Kane and Cynthia O'Neal play other romantic interests, and then there's Rita Moreno, who appears in a single, chilling scene as the representation of what Jonathan actually wants in a woman.
In the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, "Carnal Knowledge" feels more timely than ever as it explores the ins and outs of toxic masculinity, skewering the self-delusion and vanities of its two hapless protagonists. There have been other films that have similarly mocked such immature attitudes toward sex and relationships, but rarely have they been so biting, or relayed in such frankly sexual terms. And it's so fitting that director Mike Nichols is the one who brought this to the screen, having also helmed "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and "The Graduate," with "Closer" still waiting in the future.
It's fascinating that Americans still don't like to talk about sex, or see it onscreen in anything other than a titillating fashion. A film like "Carnal Knowledge" probably has less of a chance of being made today, even though the audience has long been desensitized to expletives and partial nudity. Those who seek it out now for its racier content may end up getting far more than they bargained for.
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Nearly half a century later, social mores are very different, and there's no longer much about the movie that's very shocking. There's still content that's a little distasteful, and plenty that still touches a nerve. As the title and the controversy suggest, "Carnal Knowledge" is all about sex, specifically the attitudes of a pair of men, Sandy (Art Garfunkle) and Jonathan (Jack Nicholson), toward sex and the various women in their lives over a period of fifteen years. The first part of the film deals with their relationships with Susan (Candice Bergen), who dates Sandy and cheats with Jonathan. The second part follows Jonathan's relationship with a woman named Bobbie (Ann-Margret) several years later.
We first hear our leads talking over the title credits as a pair of young college students, eagerly discussing what they're looking for in the opposite sex. Jonathan's interest is strictly physical while Sandy has more high-minded ideas. Their language is often crude, demeaning, and misogynistic, especially on Jonathan's part. He calls his exes "ballbusters," and the older he gets, the more he has, and the more bitter he becomes toward women in general. The movie understands that Jonathan is a lout, and his awful attitudes are what cause him so much misery in his relationships. However, it's still rare to see any kind of media address this head on, and portray a man like Jonathan so candidly.
The performances are a big part of why the movie is so effective. Jack Nicholson does some of his best work as Jonathan, somehow remaining sympathetic even after betraying Sandy, and treating every woman he meets terribly. He shouts and menaces, but his insecurity is apparent in every frame, and in the end his worst victim is himself. Art Garfunkel's nebbishy Sandy stands in for the average schlub, whose romantic idealism seems to point toward happiness, but then finds himself beaten down by domesticity and monogamy. There's a priceless monologue where he clinically relays the state of his moribund marital sex life that is simultaneously hilarious and tragic.
And what of the women of "Carnal Knowledge"? More prurient viewers will cherish being able to see Candice Bergen and Ann-Marget in various states of undress. However, as the POV stays with the men, we only learn a little about their partners. Ann-Marget's Bobbie comes off as the most well-rounded, a sweet woman who initially seems to be Jonathan's perfect match, but grows increasingly dissatisfied and listless within the relationship. Bergen does a lot with a very abbreviated part. Carol Kane and Cynthia O'Neal play other romantic interests, and then there's Rita Moreno, who appears in a single, chilling scene as the representation of what Jonathan actually wants in a woman.
In the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, "Carnal Knowledge" feels more timely than ever as it explores the ins and outs of toxic masculinity, skewering the self-delusion and vanities of its two hapless protagonists. There have been other films that have similarly mocked such immature attitudes toward sex and relationships, but rarely have they been so biting, or relayed in such frankly sexual terms. And it's so fitting that director Mike Nichols is the one who brought this to the screen, having also helmed "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," and "The Graduate," with "Closer" still waiting in the future.
It's fascinating that Americans still don't like to talk about sex, or see it onscreen in anything other than a titillating fashion. A film like "Carnal Knowledge" probably has less of a chance of being made today, even though the audience has long been desensitized to expletives and partial nudity. Those who seek it out now for its racier content may end up getting far more than they bargained for.
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Tuesday, June 19, 2018
Rank 'Em: The Jason Bourne Movies
I don't think that we've seen the last of super spy Jason Bourne in movie theaters, but it's probably going to be a while until the next installment of his adventures. The spinoff didn't garner much interest, it's too early to reboot the series, and Matt Damon, despite his recent box office troubles, doesn't seem keen on coming back to "Bourne" any time soon - and nobody's going to risk recasting the part. So, this is as good time to take stock of the five theatrical films in the franchise to date (which means I'm leaving out the Richard Chamberlain TV movie adaptation of "The Bourne Identity" made in 1988). I've ranked them from best to worst below. There will be some minor spoilers ahead.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) - I find it difficult to distinguish between "The Bourne Supremacy" and "The Bourne Ultimatum" because they're stylistically so similar and they feel like two parts of the same narrative. However, "Supremacy" wins the top spot for establishing so many of the elements that I associate with the "Bourne" films - Paul Greengrass's iconic shakeycam chase scenes, Pam Landry being a stone cold badass, and all the cloak and dagger business around Project Treadstone. It also has my favorite ending out of any of the films - apparently a last minute addition that Greengrass and Damon came up with two weeks before the film's release.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - This movie gives up all the answers to the questions asked in the first two films, and does so in a very satisfying fashion. The character getting a sense of closure and an endpoint to his character arc is something that James Bond never had. It's also a lot of fun to see all the ways that Paul Greengrass found to tie all three of the existing "Bourne" films together, really making them feel like one narrative. While I find "Ultimatum" has the best story of any of the films, and the critical notices definitely reflect this, the use of the shakeycam got to be too much for me at times. So it'll have to settle for second place, but only by a hair.
The Bourne Identity (2002) - The first "Bourne" film, directed by Doug Liman, is a perfectly good action adventure blockbuster. It feels a little generic in retrospect, with its romantic subplot and superspy with amnesia gimmick, but it proved that Matt Damon could be a very compelling action hero. I also enjoy Franka Potente here as Marie, and was always a little sorry that she didn't get to play much of a role in the sequels. "Identity," however, was a very different kind of film than its sequels, much lighter and more fantastical in its construction. Poor Marie simply didn't fit into the grimmer tone of the later, more ambitious "Bourne" installments.
The Bourne Legacy (2012) - The unsung hero of the "Bourne" franchise is Tony Gilroy, who scripted all the movies except for the most recent one. For the spinoff, he takes on directing duties with Jeremy Renner as the new leading man. Everyone does a very good job, and I was disappointed when it became clear that we weren't going to be getting any sequels to continue the Operation Outcome storyline. Aaron Cross is an interesting character and the new baddie played by Edward Norton has a lot of potential. The ending is a little weak, but I love some of the other sequences, especially the shootout with Zeljko Ivanek at the research lab.
Jason Bourne (2016) - I don't know what went wrong here, but it went very wrong. Maybe it was because Tony Gilroy wasn't involved. Maybe it was because the Treadstone and Blackbriar villains were replaced with the much weaker Alicia Vikander and Tommy Lee Jones characters. Maybe there just wasn't enough creative fuel left after the spectacular finale of "Ultimatum." Maybe everyone just waited too long. Anyhow, Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass couldn't get Jason Bourne back in fighting shape. The film made plenty of money, but felt creatively dead. It's a shame that the series had to end with its worst entry, but then most franchises inevitably do.
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The Bourne Supremacy (2004) - I find it difficult to distinguish between "The Bourne Supremacy" and "The Bourne Ultimatum" because they're stylistically so similar and they feel like two parts of the same narrative. However, "Supremacy" wins the top spot for establishing so many of the elements that I associate with the "Bourne" films - Paul Greengrass's iconic shakeycam chase scenes, Pam Landry being a stone cold badass, and all the cloak and dagger business around Project Treadstone. It also has my favorite ending out of any of the films - apparently a last minute addition that Greengrass and Damon came up with two weeks before the film's release.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) - This movie gives up all the answers to the questions asked in the first two films, and does so in a very satisfying fashion. The character getting a sense of closure and an endpoint to his character arc is something that James Bond never had. It's also a lot of fun to see all the ways that Paul Greengrass found to tie all three of the existing "Bourne" films together, really making them feel like one narrative. While I find "Ultimatum" has the best story of any of the films, and the critical notices definitely reflect this, the use of the shakeycam got to be too much for me at times. So it'll have to settle for second place, but only by a hair.
The Bourne Identity (2002) - The first "Bourne" film, directed by Doug Liman, is a perfectly good action adventure blockbuster. It feels a little generic in retrospect, with its romantic subplot and superspy with amnesia gimmick, but it proved that Matt Damon could be a very compelling action hero. I also enjoy Franka Potente here as Marie, and was always a little sorry that she didn't get to play much of a role in the sequels. "Identity," however, was a very different kind of film than its sequels, much lighter and more fantastical in its construction. Poor Marie simply didn't fit into the grimmer tone of the later, more ambitious "Bourne" installments.
The Bourne Legacy (2012) - The unsung hero of the "Bourne" franchise is Tony Gilroy, who scripted all the movies except for the most recent one. For the spinoff, he takes on directing duties with Jeremy Renner as the new leading man. Everyone does a very good job, and I was disappointed when it became clear that we weren't going to be getting any sequels to continue the Operation Outcome storyline. Aaron Cross is an interesting character and the new baddie played by Edward Norton has a lot of potential. The ending is a little weak, but I love some of the other sequences, especially the shootout with Zeljko Ivanek at the research lab.
Jason Bourne (2016) - I don't know what went wrong here, but it went very wrong. Maybe it was because Tony Gilroy wasn't involved. Maybe it was because the Treadstone and Blackbriar villains were replaced with the much weaker Alicia Vikander and Tommy Lee Jones characters. Maybe there just wasn't enough creative fuel left after the spectacular finale of "Ultimatum." Maybe everyone just waited too long. Anyhow, Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass couldn't get Jason Bourne back in fighting shape. The film made plenty of money, but felt creatively dead. It's a shame that the series had to end with its worst entry, but then most franchises inevitably do.
---
Sunday, June 17, 2018
"The X-files," Year Eleven (Or Twenty-Five)
Minor spoilers ahead.
After the previous season of "The X-files," I wasn't expecting much from this one. The monster-of-the-week episodes were fine, but the Chris Carter penned "mythology" episodes that bookended the season were both inept and absurd. That pretty much holds true for this year too, with "My Struggle III" and "My Struggle IV" continuing the increasingly ridiculous alien conspiracy storyline that involves several soap opera twists, endless chase scenes, and some really horrendous dialogue. Fortunately, the eight episodes that take place between them are much, much better.
Aside from one quasi-mythology episode that Chris Carter mercifully didn't write, the middle episodes are all stand-alone monster-of-the-week cases. Varying wildly in tone and content, they feature monsters, doppelgangers, killer robots, witches, and all kinds of other supernatural business. While last year's Darin Morgan episode was the only one I'd really call memorable, this year boasts at least three stronger episodes - one of which was also written by Darin Morgan. Best of all, many of these episodes feel like the old "X-files" in a way that the previous season didn't. The actors feel more engaged, the writing more relaxed, and the show is on steadier ground as a whole. Having an extra couple of episodes for this order clearly gave the creators some breathing room.
It also helps that the status quo has been more firmly established. Mulder and Scully are romantically involved, but that side of their lives stays firmly in the background. None of the shenanigans with the "mythology" episodes carries over to the individual cases, making the season feel more like an anthology of their various adventures. This is especially apparent in episodes like "Rm9sbG93ZXJz," a surreal technophobic story that feels like it takes place in an entirely different universe than the others, and would make a good "Black Mirror" installment. Or there's "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat," Darin Morgan's self-parody episode that confronts the silliness of the "X-files" concept in the age of Trump and fake news. It's definitely one of the season's highlights.
The writing staff was noticeably expanded, with several episodes being scripted by newcomers. Also, though Carter clearly retains a good amount of creative control, everyone seems to have realized that many of his contributions really were not working, and took steps to minimize them. So the new FBI agent characters played by Robbie Amell and Lauren Ambrose only have cameos, and the show retconned some of the events of the last season finale. The world is back to being on the verge of ending, rather than halfway there. Mulder and Scully's long lost son William, now a teenager played by Miles Robbins, takes a central role in the mythology episodes here. He's not all that bad, but feels like he belongs in a very different kind of show. Maybe on the CW.
Other familiar faces like Agent Spender, Agent Kersh, and Agent Reyes make appearances, but they're brief and mostly inconsequential. The one significant character from the show's past I was glad to see was Langly the Lone Gunman, who features in the stand-alone episode "This." They found a way to bring him back from the dead that was pretty clever. However, much more enjoyable were the return of the autopsy scenes, Mulder's snarky quipping, creepy character actors like Jere Burns coming over to play, and generally all the stuff that I liked about "The X-files" back in the '90s. All of it still works just fine, even though there's a lot more winking at the camera and everyone complaining about getting older.
I think "The X-files" probably could come back for another few seasons after seeing how well this year turned out, but I certainly don't want it to. Even with the improvements, I can't say bringing the show back was worth it. Also, Gillian Anderson says she's finished. We've seen what the series looks like without her and it isn't pretty. The last episode doesn't end on a great note, but it ends decently enough that I didn't come away from it feeling too badly, unlike last tine. I'm hoping FOX decides to leave well enough alone, and the whole "The X-files" revival experiment can finally come to a close.
---
After the previous season of "The X-files," I wasn't expecting much from this one. The monster-of-the-week episodes were fine, but the Chris Carter penned "mythology" episodes that bookended the season were both inept and absurd. That pretty much holds true for this year too, with "My Struggle III" and "My Struggle IV" continuing the increasingly ridiculous alien conspiracy storyline that involves several soap opera twists, endless chase scenes, and some really horrendous dialogue. Fortunately, the eight episodes that take place between them are much, much better.
Aside from one quasi-mythology episode that Chris Carter mercifully didn't write, the middle episodes are all stand-alone monster-of-the-week cases. Varying wildly in tone and content, they feature monsters, doppelgangers, killer robots, witches, and all kinds of other supernatural business. While last year's Darin Morgan episode was the only one I'd really call memorable, this year boasts at least three stronger episodes - one of which was also written by Darin Morgan. Best of all, many of these episodes feel like the old "X-files" in a way that the previous season didn't. The actors feel more engaged, the writing more relaxed, and the show is on steadier ground as a whole. Having an extra couple of episodes for this order clearly gave the creators some breathing room.
It also helps that the status quo has been more firmly established. Mulder and Scully are romantically involved, but that side of their lives stays firmly in the background. None of the shenanigans with the "mythology" episodes carries over to the individual cases, making the season feel more like an anthology of their various adventures. This is especially apparent in episodes like "Rm9sbG93ZXJz," a surreal technophobic story that feels like it takes place in an entirely different universe than the others, and would make a good "Black Mirror" installment. Or there's "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat," Darin Morgan's self-parody episode that confronts the silliness of the "X-files" concept in the age of Trump and fake news. It's definitely one of the season's highlights.
The writing staff was noticeably expanded, with several episodes being scripted by newcomers. Also, though Carter clearly retains a good amount of creative control, everyone seems to have realized that many of his contributions really were not working, and took steps to minimize them. So the new FBI agent characters played by Robbie Amell and Lauren Ambrose only have cameos, and the show retconned some of the events of the last season finale. The world is back to being on the verge of ending, rather than halfway there. Mulder and Scully's long lost son William, now a teenager played by Miles Robbins, takes a central role in the mythology episodes here. He's not all that bad, but feels like he belongs in a very different kind of show. Maybe on the CW.
Other familiar faces like Agent Spender, Agent Kersh, and Agent Reyes make appearances, but they're brief and mostly inconsequential. The one significant character from the show's past I was glad to see was Langly the Lone Gunman, who features in the stand-alone episode "This." They found a way to bring him back from the dead that was pretty clever. However, much more enjoyable were the return of the autopsy scenes, Mulder's snarky quipping, creepy character actors like Jere Burns coming over to play, and generally all the stuff that I liked about "The X-files" back in the '90s. All of it still works just fine, even though there's a lot more winking at the camera and everyone complaining about getting older.
I think "The X-files" probably could come back for another few seasons after seeing how well this year turned out, but I certainly don't want it to. Even with the improvements, I can't say bringing the show back was worth it. Also, Gillian Anderson says she's finished. We've seen what the series looks like without her and it isn't pretty. The last episode doesn't end on a great note, but it ends decently enough that I didn't come away from it feeling too badly, unlike last tine. I'm hoping FOX decides to leave well enough alone, and the whole "The X-files" revival experiment can finally come to a close.
---
Friday, June 15, 2018
Anime on PBS
It's the twentieth anniversary of "Cowboy Bebop" this year, notable for being the gateway anime series for a lot of American anime fans. It was definitely one of the titles that got me to go full otaku way back in 1999-2000. However, a much bigger influence was the existence of my local PBS station's Sunday science fiction nights, one of the only places in the U.S. at the time that was showing uncut anime, often subtitled.
KTEH was Silicon Valley's PBS station, based out of San Jose. Starting in the '80s, it showed imported episodes of "Doctor Who," and the station built a geeky evening of genre television around it over the years. "Red Dwarf," "The Prisoner," and "Blake's 7" featured regularly, and I know this was the first place I saw the 1980 version of "The Lathe of Heaven." Under programming director Karen Roberts, KTEH was known for going outside the usual channels to acquire broadcast rights for niche shows that nobody else was interested in. Starting in the mid-'90s, anime started appearing in the lineup, supported by the local otaku community via pledge drives. "Tenchi Muyo" and "Urusei Yatsura!" were some of the early titles.
The programming decisions were often fan driven to a surprising degree. The majority of the anime acquisitions were shown with subtitles because the donors were polled and that's what they wanted. I remember during a pledge drive in 2002, you could vote for which series would be licensed and aired next. I voted for the "Generator Gawl" OAV, but "All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku-Nuku" won. However, there always seemed to be restrictions and complications behind the scenes. The pledge drive hosts would talk about titles that they were trying to get the rights to, but negotiations often fell through. When dubbed anime was shown, it was usually because the American rights holders refused to licensed the subtitled versions. Occasionally we'd only see a few episodes of certain series like "Bubblegum Crisis" make it to air because the rest ended up licensed to a different network.
Still, for a couple of years the 10PM hour on Sunday night on KTEH was reserved for anime. It reminded me of a proto-"Adult Swim" in many ways, because the selections were very eclectic, the scheduling was a little chaotic, and it was never guaranteed what was going to show up there. Some offerings, like the "Ranma ½" movies, were really a stretch to call science-fiction. However, the anime always ran uncut, which was highly unusual for the time. A silly sex comedy with the occasional nudie shot like "Urusei Yatsura" or a violent techno thriller like "Serial Experiments Lain" could air on KTEH without the censoring that most other broadcasters demanded. Only a few premium cable operators like Encore and STARZ were willing to air anything unedited.
Easily the highest profile anime to ever run on KTEH was "Neon Genesis Evangelion," the notorious, controversial 1996 giant robot series that pitted three teenagers in giant robots against the apocalypse. It was bloody, it was traumatic, it was unapologetically for mature audiences, and all twenty-six episodes aired on a succession of Sundays on KTEH starting in March of 2000, completely uncut and subtitled. During the accompanying pledge event, viewers were polled on the correct way to pronounce the title. I don't remember which one won, though I remain a proponent of "EvanJELLYon." The anime fandom circles I was active in at the time were jubilant about KTEH pulling off the deal. However, the American anime ecosystem was already in the middle of drastic changes, and the particular confluence of factors that put anime on PBS were evaporating quickly.
Literally the day after "Neon Genesis Evangelion" had its US premiere on KTEH, "Mobile Suit Gundam Wing" premiered on Cartoon Network's Toonami block and became a massive hit. Suddenly there was fierce competition to license anime for American consumption by both cable and terrestrial networks, and KTEH never really managed to land any titles as large as "Evangelion" in the following years. Instead, we got increasingly obscure things like "Sakura Wars" and "Ruin Explorers" for a while, and then anime quietly disappeared from their schedules after 2003. And then KTEH merged with nearby station KQED in 2006, and that was the end of Sunday science-fiction nights.
I always found it surprising that KTEH's anime broadcasts were largely unknown among most anime fans. But then, KTEH didn't have an especially large audience, and most of the shows it aired remain pretty niche. Today's anime fans tend to skew younger and less nerdy. Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" carries on where KTEH's Sunday science-fiction night left off, though, and they even showed all of "Evangelion" uncut in 2005 and 2006. It aired on PBS first though, five years earlier and with its credit sequences intact.
---
KTEH was Silicon Valley's PBS station, based out of San Jose. Starting in the '80s, it showed imported episodes of "Doctor Who," and the station built a geeky evening of genre television around it over the years. "Red Dwarf," "The Prisoner," and "Blake's 7" featured regularly, and I know this was the first place I saw the 1980 version of "The Lathe of Heaven." Under programming director Karen Roberts, KTEH was known for going outside the usual channels to acquire broadcast rights for niche shows that nobody else was interested in. Starting in the mid-'90s, anime started appearing in the lineup, supported by the local otaku community via pledge drives. "Tenchi Muyo" and "Urusei Yatsura!" were some of the early titles.
The programming decisions were often fan driven to a surprising degree. The majority of the anime acquisitions were shown with subtitles because the donors were polled and that's what they wanted. I remember during a pledge drive in 2002, you could vote for which series would be licensed and aired next. I voted for the "Generator Gawl" OAV, but "All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku-Nuku" won. However, there always seemed to be restrictions and complications behind the scenes. The pledge drive hosts would talk about titles that they were trying to get the rights to, but negotiations often fell through. When dubbed anime was shown, it was usually because the American rights holders refused to licensed the subtitled versions. Occasionally we'd only see a few episodes of certain series like "Bubblegum Crisis" make it to air because the rest ended up licensed to a different network.
Still, for a couple of years the 10PM hour on Sunday night on KTEH was reserved for anime. It reminded me of a proto-"Adult Swim" in many ways, because the selections were very eclectic, the scheduling was a little chaotic, and it was never guaranteed what was going to show up there. Some offerings, like the "Ranma ½" movies, were really a stretch to call science-fiction. However, the anime always ran uncut, which was highly unusual for the time. A silly sex comedy with the occasional nudie shot like "Urusei Yatsura" or a violent techno thriller like "Serial Experiments Lain" could air on KTEH without the censoring that most other broadcasters demanded. Only a few premium cable operators like Encore and STARZ were willing to air anything unedited.
Easily the highest profile anime to ever run on KTEH was "Neon Genesis Evangelion," the notorious, controversial 1996 giant robot series that pitted three teenagers in giant robots against the apocalypse. It was bloody, it was traumatic, it was unapologetically for mature audiences, and all twenty-six episodes aired on a succession of Sundays on KTEH starting in March of 2000, completely uncut and subtitled. During the accompanying pledge event, viewers were polled on the correct way to pronounce the title. I don't remember which one won, though I remain a proponent of "EvanJELLYon." The anime fandom circles I was active in at the time were jubilant about KTEH pulling off the deal. However, the American anime ecosystem was already in the middle of drastic changes, and the particular confluence of factors that put anime on PBS were evaporating quickly.
Literally the day after "Neon Genesis Evangelion" had its US premiere on KTEH, "Mobile Suit Gundam Wing" premiered on Cartoon Network's Toonami block and became a massive hit. Suddenly there was fierce competition to license anime for American consumption by both cable and terrestrial networks, and KTEH never really managed to land any titles as large as "Evangelion" in the following years. Instead, we got increasingly obscure things like "Sakura Wars" and "Ruin Explorers" for a while, and then anime quietly disappeared from their schedules after 2003. And then KTEH merged with nearby station KQED in 2006, and that was the end of Sunday science-fiction nights.
I always found it surprising that KTEH's anime broadcasts were largely unknown among most anime fans. But then, KTEH didn't have an especially large audience, and most of the shows it aired remain pretty niche. Today's anime fans tend to skew younger and less nerdy. Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" carries on where KTEH's Sunday science-fiction night left off, though, and they even showed all of "Evangelion" uncut in 2005 and 2006. It aired on PBS first though, five years earlier and with its credit sequences intact.
---
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